Associate Director Software Engineering - Technology R&D
Signant Health, Romania, Pennsylvania, United States
Associate Director Software Engineering - Technology R&D
Job Description
Posted Sunday, February 22, 2026 at 10:00 PM
About Signant Health
At Signant Health, we help bring life-changing treatments to patients faster. We are a global evidence generation company supporting clinical trials through smart technology, scientific expertise, and hands‑on operational support — because better data leads to better healthcare decisions. Our teams work at the intersection of science, technology, and patient experience, delivering digital solutions that make clinical trials more efficient, accurate, and accessible worldwide. Trusted by leading pharmaceutical companies and CROs, our platforms and services support studies in more than 90 countries and have contributed to hundreds of new drug approvals. If you are motivated by meaningful work, global impact, and innovation in clinical research and digital health, you will find purpose — and opportunity — at Signant Health.
About the Role:
The Associate Director of Software Engineering is an AI‑first engineering leader who will guide one or more of Signant Health's Platform teams, with responsibility spanning one or more teams as the organization grows and evolves. This role is for someone who is genuinely energized by the possibilities of generative AI, AI Copilots, and agentic systems — and who wants to help build the engineering foundation that makes those capabilities real across Signant's Platform organization. You will be a hands‑on, pragmatic leader who can credibly engage with engineers at a technical level while driving delivery, quality, and team growth.
This leader owns the day‑to‑day health of Signant Health's Platform teams — monitoring individual contributions to Sprint Goals, coaching engineers on delivery and craft, and removing blockers that impede progress. They are accountable for team metrics, reporting, and future planning within agile processes, and are expected to bring a pragmatic, results‑oriented approach to how work gets prioritized and executed across the Platform organization. As the Platform teams grow and evolve, this leader will play a central role in shaping their operating model, tooling, and team culture.
What you will do:
Provides technical leadership across Signant Health's Platform teams — driving the successful delivery of infrastructure, developer tooling, and AI‑powered capabilities that serve Signant's engineering organization and products.
Leads and grows high‑performing teams within the Platform organization, setting clear productivity and quality objectives, tracking individual progress, and coaching engineers toward continuous improvement.
Champions the adoption of AI Copilots, agentic engineering patterns, and LLM‑powered developer tooling across Signant Health's Platform teams, actively influencing how teams build and ship software.
Partners with Product Leads, Product Managers, and engineering leadership to translate business requirements into sound technical direction and executable plans for the Platform organization.
Acts as a subject matter expert in AI/GenAI application development and platform engineering, providing hands‑on guidance on architecture, design, and implementation decisions across Signant's Platform teams.
Ensures all Platform team members fulfill their QMS responsibilities and contributes to the ongoing improvement of departmental procedures, working instructions, and technical standards.
Identifies recruiting needs within the Platform organization and works closely with the talent team to attract and hire high-quality engineers; identifies skills gaps and drives targeted development plans across the team.
Serves as a key technical facilitator in the design and evolution of Signant Health's platform capabilities, maintaining a sharp focus on long‑term architectural quality and scalability.
Manages relationships with partners and subcontractors supporting the Platform teams, including review and approval of contractor deliverables and invoices.
Contributes to Signant's AI Innovation Council and engineering‑wide initiatives around developer productivity, AI governance, and platform modernization.
Preferred:
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related technical field.
10+ years of professional software development experience, with a strong foundation in building and shipping production systems.
5+ years managing or leading software engineering teams, ideally within a platform or infrastructure‑oriented organization.
Demonstrable passion for and hands‑on experience with AI/GenAI — including LLM application development, AI Copilots, and agentic systems or multi‑agent orchestration frameworks.
Experience with platform engineering practices, internal developer platforms (IDP), or developer experience tooling that serves engineering teams at scale.
Proficiency with AWS services, particularly those relevant to AI/ML workloads and cloud‑native platform engineering (e.g., Bedrock, EKS, Lambda, IAM).
Experience with GitHub and GitHub Actions for source control, CI/CD, and developer workflow automation.
Proven ability to operate hands‑on at a technical level while simultaneously leading teams — comfortable reviewing architecture, contributing to technical design, and holding engineers to high engineering standards.
Strong cross‑functional collaboration skills; able to establish and maintain effective working relationships across engineering, product, and business stakeholders, including in virtual and matrix environments.
Ability to manage competing priorities effectively and adapt to a fast‑moving, technology‑driven organization.
Experience with CI/CD tooling such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins or Azure DevOps.
Familiarity with microservices, event‑driven architecture, domain‑driven design, or API‑driven development patterns.
Exposure to regulated industries (e.g., healthcare, life sciences, GxP environments) is a plus but not required.
Experience with modern data platforms (Snowflake) or relational/document databases.
Familiarity with observability and monitoring tooling (e.g., Dynatrace).
Why Signant Health?
At Signant Health, your work has real impact. Everything we build, support, and deliver helps advance clinical research and bring new treatments to patients faster — improving lives around the world. Our teams combine science, technology, and operational expertise to solve complex clinical trial challenges, and every role contributes to that mission. We offer a collaborative, global environment where you can grow your career while working alongside experts across clinical, technology, data, and operations, with opportunities to learn, take ownership, and drive meaningful innovation — not just maintain the status quo. If you are looking for purpose‑driven work, smart colleagues, and the opportunity to help shape the future of clinical research and digital health, Signant Health is the place to do it.
At Signant Health, accepting difference isn’t enough—we celebrate it, we support it, and we nurture it for the benefit of our team members, our clients and our community. Signant Health is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or veteran status.
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About Signant Health
At Signant Health, we help bring life-changing treatments to patients faster. We are a global evidence generation company supporting clinical trials through smart technology, scientific expertise, and hands‑on operational support — because better data leads to better healthcare decisions. Our teams work at the intersection of science, technology, and patient experience, delivering digital solutions that make clinical trials more efficient, accurate, and accessible worldwide. Trusted by leading pharmaceutical companies and CROs, our platforms and services support studies in more than 90 countries and have contributed to hundreds of new drug approvals. If you are motivated by meaningful work, global impact, and innovation in clinical research and digital health, you will find purpose — and opportunity — at Signant Health.
About the Role:
The Associate Director of Software Engineering is an AI‑first engineering leader who will guide one or more of Signant Health's Platform teams, with responsibility spanning one or more teams as the organization grows and evolves. This role is for someone who is genuinely energized by the possibilities of generative AI, AI Copilots, and agentic systems — and who wants to help build the engineering foundation that makes those capabilities real across Signant's Platform organization. You will be a hands‑on, pragmatic leader who can credibly engage with engineers at a technical level while driving delivery, quality, and team growth.
This leader owns the day‑to‑day health of Signant Health's Platform teams — monitoring individual contributions to Sprint Goals, coaching engineers on delivery and craft, and removing blockers that impede progress. They are accountable for team metrics, reporting, and future planning within agile processes, and are expected to bring a pragmatic, results‑oriented approach to how work gets prioritized and executed across the Platform organization. As the Platform teams grow and evolve, this leader will play a central role in shaping their operating model, tooling, and team culture.
What you will do:
Provides technical leadership across Signant Health's Platform teams — driving the successful delivery of infrastructure, developer tooling, and AI‑powered capabilities that serve Signant's engineering organization and products.
Leads and grows high‑performing teams within the Platform organization, setting clear productivity and quality objectives, tracking individual progress, and coaching engineers toward continuous improvement.
Champions the adoption of AI Copilots, agentic engineering patterns, and LLM‑powered developer tooling across Signant Health's Platform teams, actively influencing how teams build and ship software.
Partners with Product Leads, Product Managers, and engineering leadership to translate business requirements into sound technical direction and executable plans for the Platform organization.
Acts as a subject matter expert in AI/GenAI application development and platform engineering, providing hands‑on guidance on architecture, design, and implementation decisions across Signant's Platform teams.
Ensures all Platform team members fulfill their QMS responsibilities and contributes to the ongoing improvement of departmental procedures, working instructions, and technical standards.
Identifies recruiting needs within the Platform organization and works closely with the talent team to attract and hire high-quality engineers; identifies skills gaps and drives targeted development plans across the team.
Serves as a key technical facilitator in the design and evolution of Signant Health's platform capabilities, maintaining a sharp focus on long‑term architectural quality and scalability.
Manages relationships with partners and subcontractors supporting the Platform teams, including review and approval of contractor deliverables and invoices.
Contributes to Signant's AI Innovation Council and engineering‑wide initiatives around developer productivity, AI governance, and platform modernization.
Preferred:
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related technical field.
10+ years of professional software development experience, with a strong foundation in building and shipping production systems.
5+ years managing or leading software engineering teams, ideally within a platform or infrastructure‑oriented organization.
Demonstrable passion for and hands‑on experience with AI/GenAI — including LLM application development, AI Copilots, and agentic systems or multi‑agent orchestration frameworks.
Experience with platform engineering practices, internal developer platforms (IDP), or developer experience tooling that serves engineering teams at scale.
Proficiency with AWS services, particularly those relevant to AI/ML workloads and cloud‑native platform engineering (e.g., Bedrock, EKS, Lambda, IAM).
Experience with GitHub and GitHub Actions for source control, CI/CD, and developer workflow automation.
Proven ability to operate hands‑on at a technical level while simultaneously leading teams — comfortable reviewing architecture, contributing to technical design, and holding engineers to high engineering standards.
Strong cross‑functional collaboration skills; able to establish and maintain effective working relationships across engineering, product, and business stakeholders, including in virtual and matrix environments.
Ability to manage competing priorities effectively and adapt to a fast‑moving, technology‑driven organization.
Experience with CI/CD tooling such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins or Azure DevOps.
Familiarity with microservices, event‑driven architecture, domain‑driven design, or API‑driven development patterns.
Exposure to regulated industries (e.g., healthcare, life sciences, GxP environments) is a plus but not required.
Experience with modern data platforms (Snowflake) or relational/document databases.
Familiarity with observability and monitoring tooling (e.g., Dynatrace).
Why Signant Health?
At Signant Health, your work has real impact. Everything we build, support, and deliver helps advance clinical research and bring new treatments to patients faster — improving lives around the world. Our teams combine science, technology, and operational expertise to solve complex clinical trial challenges, and every role contributes to that mission. We offer a collaborative, global environment where you can grow your career while working alongside experts across clinical, technology, data, and operations, with opportunities to learn, take ownership, and drive meaningful innovation — not just maintain the status quo. If you are looking for purpose‑driven work, smart colleagues, and the opportunity to help shape the future of clinical research and digital health, Signant Health is the place to do it.
At Signant Health, accepting difference isn’t enough—we celebrate it, we support it, and we nurture it for the benefit of our team members, our clients and our community. Signant Health is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or veteran status.
#J-18808-Ljbffr